Quaoar

[Londoner]

I can report today that my good friend Jonathon Bradshaw aka Astrojunk together with Renato Langersek and John Broughton detected a ring system surrounding the minor dwarf planet Quaoar. Acknowledgement of the find was published in Nature and New Scientist today.
Congratulations to the three Queenslanders.

Mick

[Nikolas]

:clap::clap::clap::clap::clap::clap ::clap::clap::clap:

[xelasnave]

Thanks for posting such wonderful news.
Congratulations to the men who made the discovery.
Alex

[AstroJunk]

Thanks Mick et al, it's certainly all over the science news today!

Occultation observing certainly throws the odd curveball and this was no exception :thumbsup: This is an animated gif of the ring passing over a star and in the process, making itself known for the first time.

http://shadowchaser.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Quaoar-Discovery.gif

[h0ughy]

Awesome results and find

[strongmanmike]

Wow that's amazing!! Cool video, who would have thought...:shrug: nice work men :thumbsup::thumbsup:

Mike

[Crater101]

My very sincere congratulations! :cool::2thumbs: Awesome work there.

[AstroViking]

Congrats guys! That's an amazing discovery. :thumbsup:

[EpickCrom]

I was reading about that discovery yesterday. Very impressive and congratulations to the discoverers!:thumbsup::thumbsup:

[Dave882]

Amazing! Excellent work

[oska]

QUEESNSLANDERS! Congratz all.

[AstroJunk]

Many thanks for all of the kind words, I'll elaborate the discovery conditions - the press releases rather favour the professional community :rofl:

Myself and many others were observing this event for a main body occultation predicted by Luckystar late 2021, but seeing that we were well out of the predicted path the queenslander contingent decided to take a long-shot and record early and late to see if we could discover anything unusual. And boy did that pay off.

I was watching live with Renato and spotted a 'blip' several minutes early and jotted down the time in my observers log. The main event came and went as expected - a miss - but when we reduced the data it was clear that our data, and that of John Broughton, lined up perfectly.

And to quote John : "After downloading a Ser viewer I can confirm the occultation blip is for real! The only conclusion to come to is that Quaoar must have a narrow ring about 10km wide and by implication is indirect evidence of shepherd moons. The fact that only single occultations have been observed from 3 out of 7 sites suggest it's a ring arc akin to those discovered in the 80s surrounding Neptune, but even those have non-opaque matter in the remainder of the orbit. With that in mind, and extrapolating the Queensland times southward, the NSW observers should look for a 1 or 2-second fade around 10:52:00 UT."

Armed with our discovery data, the professional observatories who had data back to 2018 re-visited their observations and with the knowledge of the exact position of our ring, managed to eek out some overlooked pre-discovery data out of the noise to further confirm the position and nature of its unusual structure.

It took about 18 months to publish what we had worked out in as many hours, but that is how academia works!

And that my friends, is history.

[blink138]

amazing science our boys bravo!
pat

[Renato]

Thank you for the write-up Mick. I second what Jonathan wrote and like to add this. It's incredible how everyone jumps up and wants a piece of the pie. Many professional institutions claimed in the media the discovery as their own, forgetting that, if we didn't show them our data, they probably still wouldn't have found the 'precious' ring.